Try and buy – a laptop or a cellphone…

I was in the market for buying a laptop to replace my old workhorse. Before I stumbled upon what I needed -I must have made a dozen visits to various shops and dealers in Pune -I had to suffer speaking to half-wits who were designated as customer executives, for whom the weight or the battery life of a laptop didn’t matter. The experience is the same if one wants buy a music system.

If you have dealt with new technology powered banks, you may have dealt with ill-suited products, unhelpful or ignorant staff. My question to HDFC Bank on digitally signed documents remains unanswered – I can not run their signature endorser application on my Vista machine. It just ran fine on good old windows XP machine.

It is very hard to come across knowledgeable people or well designed services which can make your life easier. Imagine people like you and me have to sweat it out to buy things!

I am afraid, for all the talk of talent development very little is done on the ground. The growth in economies around the world has made attracting and retaining talent a very critical necessity for companies. Executive salaries are hitting new highs like crude prices but there is no talk of managerial or leadership output!

Don’t you think that companies ought to put their people to through leadership development paces (and not send them off on a training vacation)?